


drop the game

by Joana789



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Character Study, M/M, Neil Josten Is an Idiot, Relationship Study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-27
Updated: 2017-09-27
Packaged: 2019-01-06 03:08:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12202689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Joana789/pseuds/Joana789
Summary: Then, the pills are gone. The buzzing in his veins is gone. The too-bright colors of the world are gone, everything back to its overwhelming dullness again.Neil Josten is, startlingly, still there.





	drop the game

**Author's Note:**

> i needed a breather from other fandoms, so i came back here. it's this time of the year again.
> 
> hope my andrew is bearable.

 

For a long time, the world just rolls by. Andrew lets it. He watches the seconds slip through his fingers, watches the minutes tick away on the clock, the hours pass. Listens to the life happening outside his window, outside his car, outside him. The world is painted in boring greys and plain blacks and austere whites, no matter how long he looks. He’s only here because he has to be.

It’s easy, in a way. A set of motions to go through every morning and every night — wake up, do your thing, fall asleep. Not a routine, because those are unnecessary, but a sense of familiarity. People around him seem to think it’s important, for some reason — to have habits, to repeat your choices until a pattern arises, to get used to the way things are.

There’s nothing about life Andrew would ever want to get used to, nothing about life worth getting used to in the first place, but Andrew is, somehow, still here. He smokes cigarettes before practice, drives over the speed limit, sorts out a mess after a mess after a mess, Aaron’s and Kevin’s and all the others, and it’s not exactly interesting, but it’s something to do either way. Andrew will take it.

Life is about choices, for him, and those are his — holding Kevin uptight when he can’t do it himself, sparring with Renee when he notices her demeanor weaken and the cracks in her smile show, brushing past Aaron in the hallways without sparing a glance. Keeping his promises, because no one else ever did. Protecting, watching, listening. Nothing less, nothing more.

He will live until he doesn’t. That’s all there is to it.

(That’s all there _was_.)

  
———

  
Neil Josten is only a blip on his radar until he isn’t. A voice on the outskirts of Andrew’s mind that he chooses to ignore until it gets too loud. Neil is a warning sign, with all of his lies and his scars scattered across his whole body and with the way he carries himself, like he’s expecting to have to break into a run at any given moment.

Andrew suspects that he is, in some way.

The drugs dull the edge of him, at first. Make it all softer, the brown-then-blue color of Neil’s eyes, the rare tilt of his mouth when he smiles. They put sparks in Andrew’s blood, force a grin upon his face, put the world askew, color it bright yellow and neon green, for once, and in the meantime, Neil gets under Andrew’s skin. He has a bad temper and a habit of getting into fights, and a range of secrets he never seems to run out of. Neil is dangerous, and then he is unnerving, and then he is interesting.

There are pills in the pocket of Andrew’s jeans and the familiar weight of knives against his forearms and violence curling and twisting in his bones, easy as a spark and just as quick, and yet Neil is not afraid. He argues and bends his own words until they almost break and any piece of truth he gives up is like a treasure in itself. But he stays when Andrew tells him to.

He must be really stupid, Andrew guesses. An idiot with too little self-preservation instinct.

It doesn’t mean anything, but it could.

  
———

  
Then, the pills are gone. The buzzing in his veins is gone. The too-bright colors of the world are gone, everything back to its overwhelming dullness again.

Neil Josten is, startlingly, still there.

  
———

  
When Andrew kisses him, the sensation is crushing like the tide coming in. The hard press of their lips, Neil’s breath catching, Andrew’s pulse going twice as fast as it should. But it is still control. An untainted thing, for once — kissing; it is almost safe. He kisses Neil and Neil kisses him back, and again and again and it’s warm, almost unexpectedly so, like embers that threaten to grow into a fire if overlooked. A step away from them, there’s nothing but space, height, terrifying expanse. For one long second, Andrew doesn’t think about it.

Neil’s hands hover an inch away from Andrew’s jaw, and Andrew waits for the touch without his permission, but it doesn’t come. He feels teeth grazing his lower lip, instead, the heat, the pressure.

Andrew thinks, _enough_ , and moves away.

  
———

  
The thing is — it is easy to tell Neil yes. Easier than it should be, because Andrew is self-destructive, and if Neil is a disease, then he will let it fester. He keeps doing it, keeps trading truths for truths, keeps letting him touch, keeps feeling his eyes on his own skin and not saying a word about it.

Words are useless, anyway. Never hold enough meaning. People forget about them, like they forget about everything else, and Andrew is then the only one left who still remembers. But Neil seems to have a habit of pushing Andrew further and further, and he makes him want to argue, makes him want to speak up, defend, deflect, no matter how pointless talking is in the first place.

Neil likes big words. It's stupid, like everything he does. Weirdly, he seems to find comfort in them. _Home_ , he tells him, even though he never had one, even though he clutches the bundle of his keys like a lifeline. _Family. Future._ As if any of it ever belonged to him. As if any of it actually meant anything at all.

But he also has a tendency of proving Andrew wrong, time after time after time. Andrew hates him for it, every day a bit more.

The percents go up. Ninety-one. Ninety-two. Ninety-three.

  
———

  
And then they get to one hundred very, very quickly.

  
———

  
Fear feels like falling. Neil said, after all, that he would drag Andrew down with him. It was one of the few things he did not lie about.

Andrew’s life has been made of days filled with nothing and of emptiness in his chest and of waiting. For the life to stop going forward. For the world to stop spinning.

And then, this.

A bundle of keys left behind. A trashed racquet on the ground. A phone in his hand, a number he doesn’t recognize on the screen, a text message that says _”0”_ and nothing else. Andrew wants to go back and cut Neil Josten out of his life, wants to throw something at the wall, wants to burn the stadium down, wants to take out his knives and make use of them.

Andrew is no stranger to fear, because it used to come to him often, in the dark, as a shadow in the hallway or a noise at the door, back then, and he won’t forget, no matter how much he’d want to. But it was never this. It was different.

When the realization sinks in, it is cold.

  
———

  
A lifetime later, Neil stands before him with his hands meticulously bandaged and body hidden in clothes that aren’t his. The burns on his cheek are angry red and painful, the slashes deep. Neil’s expression looks like a mosaic that somebody threw at the ground and then ineptly put back together. The pieces don’t match. His piercing blue eyes look haunted. His mouth is a pale, twisted line.

But he is there. Breathing. Alive. Andrew makes sure, inspects the wounds, watches the rise and fall of his chest. Grabs at his hoodie and holds on. Pushes down the violence twisting in his gut, tucks it away for now and listens instead, watches. Neil looks at him like he knows what’s going on in Andrew’s mind, and for once, Andrew doesn’t tell him to look away.

Something changes, flickers and shifts, then, but he doesn’t notice. He gets distracted by how hoarse Neil’s voice sounds, how he doesn’t move away an inch, how he threads his fingers through Andrew’s hair, carefully, and how it dilutes the cold in Andrew’s bones.

If fear is falling, then relief is this.

  
———

  
(Only when it’s too late does he realize — there is no coming back from that. _Nothing_ is no longer an option.)

  
———

  
He overlooked, and the fire spread, and now it’s raging — it’s there when Neil asks ”Yes or no?” again and again, and the answer stays the same, because it’s _yes_ , because he's stupid enough to tell Neil yes. It’s there when Neil kisses Andrew’s neck, when Neil breathes into his mouth, lets himself get pressed into a wall, bites on his lip and Andrew has to suppress the shudders. Suddenly, all the walls Andrew had built around himself seem paper-thin, useless, see-through. Neil makes them crumble to the ground with a word.

Andrew wakes up to the sight of him in the mornings, now, looks at the complicated pattern of the burn marks and the freckles on Neil’s skin before he gets up.

There is nothing there. This is not a _this_. It is not his answer. Those are the mantras that echo in Andrew’s head, the things he uses to push his desires down. He is not Neil’s. Neil is not his.

Except that maybe he’s starting to be.

  
———

  
For the most part, not much changes. The world rolls by. The time passes, and Andrew lets it. The days go by, weeks, months. The world is still a dim grey, a tedious black.

Except for the blue of Neil’s eyes. The auburn of his hair. The way the light dawns over him in the mornings.

”You know,” Neil tells him one day, lips curling slightly around the cigarette he’s smoking by the window, ”You’re stuck with me now.”

Andrew peers at him, expression indifferent. ”Unfortunately.”

Neil’s smile widens a fraction at that. Andrew doesn’t look away from it for a second.

  
———

  
If there is one thing Neil did not lie about, it is this — he will stay. He stays.

Andrew does, too.

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr](http://sanasbakkcush.tumblr.com)   
>  [twitter](https://twitter.com/thisbitcch1)


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